[Myron Piatek]

Hagen,

It's like the "what came first, chicken or the egg". You can't have one without the other.
IHRA can't raise purses more because they would be in the red if not enough cars show up and it's difficult to attract contingency sponsors with lower car counts. But not enough cars attend partially because the purse and contingency isn't high enough to attract more.

IHRA did raise Stock winner's purse and round money last year along along with the rest of the classes.

But it's still good, competitive racing that takes less travel time and money to participate in. If more cars would show up, payouts and contingency could grow too.

As for local bracket racers, they normally wouldn't have a Stock/SS class to race in unless the event included a bracket program, they built a class-specific car, or were legal for Top Sportsman, Top Dragster or a .90 class as-is.